Cactus, Duck

Sirs:

Will TIME'S expression: "dry as a cactus" hold water? Desert travelers sometimes split a barrel cactus in half, squeeze the pulp through a cloth, get a cup of sweetish water. The giant cactus, a mass of pulp held together by fibrous ribs, absorbs water on rainy days and swells out like a toad. Woodpeckers drill holes in the trunk, occupy them.

An eminent naturalist (Dr. Horniday) tells of a duck disappointed with prohibition, who retired to the desert. Selecting a suitable giant cactus, she shoved out the woodpecker tenants and moved in. It was cool and comfortable, had running water in every room. In this rustic solitude she spent her declining years. On summer evenings she might have been observed sitting by an open window, her bright green head thrust out in an attitude of expectancy, a sharp eye peeled for passing worms and unsuspecting bugs.

JIM SHINE

Grand Canyon, Ariz.

Horses, Horses

Sirs:

I was interested in the fifth correction of Herbert Janvrin Browne in LETTERS of Oct. 29. "Incidentally," Mr. Browne writes, "less is known about the slumber habits of horses than of any other domestic animal." That may be, but I have had experience which proves to me, at least, that horses do sleep, and with a vengeance, too.

It was the "privilege" last summer of my brother and myself while sojourning in Yellowstone National Park (waiting for a motorcycle repair part) to spend a night in the horse stable of Old Faithful Camp. Not accustomed to such lodging (though the hay was comfortable enough) we slept little, and had a good opportunity to observe the nocturnal habits of the six horses tied to the opposite side of the manger. For the first hour or two they munched noisily on hay. Tiring of this, they would bite each other on the neck in a friendly way, or would spray us violently through their nostrils. All the while they were lunging about restlessly against the walls and the manger (beneath which we lay), and stamping about as though to shake the flimsy structure to pieces.

At length (about one in the morning) they quieted down, and, I firmly believe, went to sleep. They were the most human-sounding beasts I have ever met! All the grunts, sighs, groans, wheezes, and measured snores of human sleep were reproduced in a generous but exact replica. One snored so persistently that one of our hobo companions woke, swore sleepily, and with a stick rapped the offender into startled wakefulness and silence. Perhaps some of your other subscribers have had similar first-hand experience.

M. THURSTON WARD

Gary, Ind.

Somebody Knows

Sirs:

Thank you so much for the article in TIME. I am turning it over to my Business Manager. Somebody in your office knows all about us folks, and I have often wondered who it is.

HOMER SAINT-GAUDENS

Carnegie Institute,

Department of Fine Arts,

Pittsburgh, Pa.

Again, Doggerel

Sirs:

I've read Mary Burchard Pryor's letter to you and before that I read the nun's canceling her subscription because of the doggerel you copied [TIME, Oct. 29; Nov. 5]. I liked Miss Pryor's letter; I did not like the nun's. The good Sister was too hasty. I'd say the poor little soul is overworked, and has to read while she's flying around doing a dozen other things, none of them easy. I know nuns and their trying career; had charge of nuns for years. You were perfectly in the right. Sometimes Catholics are too ready to take offence where not the slightest offence is intended. Perhaps Catholics get that way from having stood for more than their share of unjust abuse. I know I hit the ceiling this week when I learned that every single one of my mountaineer parishioners and even myself received a copy of a nasty, ornery anti-Catholic sheet. But when I started my green wood fire with the raggy propaganda, I felt more my usual self. Just paper and postage wasted on us by a bigot. God's in His heaven, and all will never be right with politics anyhow. I'll wager that the nun was sorry one hour after she sent you her letter, when she knelt down to make her meditation.

FATHER WILL WHALEN

Old Jesuit Mission,

Orrtanna, Pa.

Sister Mary Basil, 0. P., cancelled her subscription when TIME reprinted some doggerel which was typical of campaign slurs on Alfred E. Smith and the Roman Catholic Church.--ED.

Sirs:

Your comment on the letter of Mary B. Pryor in the issue of Nov. 5 fills me with disgust. The lady administered to you one of the most merited rebukes you or any other publication ever received, and you weren't honest enough to admit it. There was no excuse for the first printing of the cheap anti-Catholic verses by which the Sister was offended; your inclusion of them only served to give them wider circulation. When you reprinted them under the Sister's letter of protest, you marked yourselves as either boors or sympathizers with those verses. Then when another lady writes you to reprove you for your second exhibition of bad taste, you "crawl." There is no other term for it. You defended yourself by pretending you expected the publication of such trash would lead others "to join with TIME in holding them up to odium and detestation." Pray where is the odium you provided? Then you say that when such verses affect a campaign, you print specimens. So no matter how cheap, insulting, offensive the campaign material may be, you will print samples and then reprint them under people's protests! Bah, TIME!

I shall not cancel my subscription, but I must say I have less respect for you and should hesitate to recommend you to every one. Moreover, many more such exhibitions of bad judgment, bad manners, and bad sportsmanship will finish me as a subscriber.

S. M. SHEA

Lawrenceville, N. J.

P. S. I am not a Catholic nor a Smith supporter.

Reminder

My good educators:

Kindly print this as a reminder:

May this "landslide'' be a lesson to the young salesman who thinks he can sell his wares by criticizing the other fellow. May it show the immoral that they are the unfortunate few. May it teach the foreigner that the Americans are still in control, and "may it once and for all proove (sic) to the Vatican that we do not want to confuse religion with our government.

LUTHER MURPHY

New York City

Silk Purse

Sirs:

I notice in a letter from A. Landers, TIME, Oct. 29, page 4, that he asks Alvin G. Anderson in a rather sarcastic way if he has heard that little one: "you can't make a silk purse out of a sow's ear."

Evidently Mr. Landers is a bit behind "TIME" as you will see by examining the enclosed clipping descriptive of just such a purse made out of a sow's ear by the well known chemical engineers, Arthur D. Little, Inc., of Cambridge, Mass.

ARTHUR HOWLAND

Cambridge, Mass.

Making the silk from a sow's ear was a chemical tour de force not at all practical. Artificial silk is made from vegetable matter, cellulose.--ED.

Morgue Man

Sirs:

... I cannot but wonder what your idea was in publishing [Oct. 22] on page 10, under "Prohibition," a likeness of one John Becak, Manhattan wagon driver for the morgue. Who among TIME subscribers cares what a wagon driver for the morgue looks like? Do you call this "news"? I certainly do not. . . .

FREDERICK W. JOHNSON

Los Angeles, Calif.

Let no TIME subscriber attempt to debase Driver John Becak who serves society frequently and much.--ED.

Record by Franklin

Sirs:

In your Nov. 5 issue--under "Aeronautics"-- in speaking of the new transcontinental flight of the "Yankee Doodle" you say, "By automobile it recently took 4 days, 8 hours, and 47 minutes."

On June 16, a stock Franklin Sedan driven by Cannon Ball Baker, completed the fastest round-trip ever made by automobile or train between Los Angeles and New York, covering 6,692 miles in 6 1/4 days. ... On the trip east the time was 74 hours flat. ... On the return trip, the total time was 83 hours and 23 minutes. . . .

Each was a new record. And the one-way record for automobile or train thus stands at 3 days and 2 hours. . . .

GEORGE L. MILLER

United States Advertising Corp.,

Toledo, Ohio

Life Saver

Sirs:

I enclose herewith part of a letter from Ray Potter, one of my former roommates at Yale.

WM. NEWBOLD ELY JR.

Fisher-Wilson Advertising Agency,

Philadelphia, Pa.

Dear Bill:

I suppose that it is almost an insult to answer someone's letter a year and a half late, and still worse to thank them for a Christmas present received almost as long ago. I am doing both, and I hope you will forgive me, knowing that writing is my weakness and no one else gets any better treatment. In sending me TIME you not only did me a good turn but did a very good business deal for "TIME, INC." It was the first time I ever saw or heard of TIME. At least half a dozen subscriptions were entered down here after seeing mine, and now you see it everywhere. It is a life saver in a place where it takes four weeks for mail to arrive, and I bless you for sending it to me.

HORATIO POTTER

Caracales Tin Co. of Bolivia,

La Paz, Bolivia